Mozilla Clams Up As It Reaps a Whirlwind Of Disapproval

6 Apr 2014

In the wake the forced resignation of Mozilla’s embattled co-founder Brendan Eich, Mozilla, the company that operates the web browser Firefox, now finds itself embattled.

When Eich was hired as CEO last month, outraged gay activists immediately started calling for his scalp because of his support for Prop 8, which passed in California with 52 percent of the vote in November of 2008.

The new CEO of Mozilla issued a statement alluding to their commitment to freedom of speech, diversity, and inclusiveness – which apparently necessitated their exclusion of a person who held an opinion that differed from theirs. This sounded like Orwellian doublespeak to many observers.

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.

While painful, the events of the last week show exactly why we need the web. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to make the world better.

Unfortunately, the conversations have gotten a little too tough for Mozilla in recent days and now, as they are being hit with a firestorm of disapproval – they’ve clammed up. All requests for interviews are met with: “While we appreciate you reaching out, at this time, Mozilla is not doing any more interviews on the topic. For more information, you can reference Mozilla’s blog post from Mitchell on the topic.” And they link back to Mitchell Baker’s bizarre, Orwellian statement – which only fanned the flames.

Mozilla experienced an extremely high level of negative customer feedback on Friday the day after they forced Brendan Eich to hit the bricks. On Friday, the feedback showed 94% of respondents were “sad” verses 6% “happy.” As of this writing, it’s 91% “sad” verses 9% happy.

The comments on the Mozilla webpage are blistering: “Now that you have had time to think this over, do you continue to believe that a company committed to tolerance and diversity should fire people who make private political contributions you disagree with?” one sad face asked.

People are uninstalling Firefox in droves. You can register your approval or disapproval here, and comment here.

The results, thus far, indicate that even people who support gay marriage, are appalled by Mozilla’s fascist impulses. As the Chick-Fil-A dust-up proved a couple of years ago – when the gay mafia starts pushing too hard, the silent majority pushes back harder.